"I've decided I'm going to try having a dream," Scapegrace said.
Practice the day after the opening match had ended, and a group of Elderlanders were seated high atop one of the towering lighting towers at the training facility in Aloquirbe. Bellwether had been the first to set his eyes on the dizzying height, inveterate leaper and show-off that he was. Others had quickly followed though. To the gnomes, it was a new and exciting activity, leaping, climbing, shimmying and otherwise making their way to swing their legs from the fixtures atop the high steel pole. Tarvos at first had threatened to tear the light pole down, considering the gnomish behavior undignified, but quickly fell to bickering and bragging with his irrepressible teammates. In the end, he joined them, arriving on top of the pole with a single, perspective defying step. Any mortal present would likely have been driven to a headache at best by the casual defiance of physics on display. Fortunately, the practice field was not open to the public. The Britonish hosts had proven much more tolerant than the Tanirinthians last time out, forcing no special provisions on the Fey team to hide their true nature. Still, while some Britonish citizens had seemed curious about these strange visitors to their land, the consistently odd behavior of the Elderlanders could be off-putting or even frightening for some, and thus they'd kept mostly to themselves.
All the same, some degree of curiosity from the Fey toward their mortal hosts was only to be expected, especially since they were now permitted to mingle openly.
"Having a what now?" Numbles squinted into the sunlight, shading his eyes as he looked at Scapegrace.
"A dream, it's a thing that mortals do while they're sleeping." Scapegrace had an unusually patient manner for a gnome. While most were the very embodiment of youthful exuberance with attention spans that scarcely spanned the space of a breath, her many years of life had given her a much different perspective, even in relation to the others on the team, who were themselves more focused than many of their fellows.
"What gnomish foolishness is this?" Tarvos frowned down from where he stood stiffly over the seated gnomes and eladrin. "Mortals do nothing while they sleep. They close their eyes and lie still as stones, nothing more. They must do so or they shall die, I deem."
"No," Scapegrace insisted, prompting a threatening glower from the archfey, "they have thoughts in their minds even while they sleep, though often they are not aware of it."
"How could anyone not be aware of their own thoughts?" scoffed Beefwit (loudly, though that essentially goes without saying in his case). "I always knows what I'm thinkin."
"Mortals are strange creatures," began Jareth, who had more experience than most with mortal travelers in the Elder Lands. "They are not like us, creatures of will and intention. They are knit of flesh and bone like the beasts, but trapped within is a mind not unlike our own. The flesh must rest, as Tarvos says, but the mind, the soul I deem, is restless. It tells itself stories while the body sleeps to keep company."
"But there are some mortals who say that there is no soul, only their flesh," continued Scapegrace, "and yet they dream still. Could it be some natural process of their body instead? I am not sure how to have a dream myself though."
"These dreams you speak of are no tales told by an imprisoned mind." Hallar now spoke up, nearly as aged as Jareth, and well respected by the team, even Tarvos. "They receive visions from our own minds. Just as the Eldest can speak into the minds of their followers, these mortals can hear our thoughts, after a fashion, though only when their own minds are quieted in repose." He turned to Scapegrace and shook his head sadly, "I fear that such an experience is impossible for you, who are of a different nature from they."
Scapegrace frowned and showed Hallar her middle finger, a human gesture she'd learned recently and was thoroughly enjoying. "What do you know about it anyway? Go practice your bow and arrows until you can score more goals than me. If I say I'm going to have a dream then I'm going to have one, and nothing you say will stop me."
"All I have to do now is figure out how to sleep."
